TV Review: Michael Douglas, Matt Damon in ‘Behind the Candleabra’

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CHICAGO – It could have been so awful. Liberace was such an over-the-top character that capturing his most extreme behavior in the form of a TV movie could have been the kind of campy thing that deserves comparison to “Showgirls.” Balancing the borderline insane personality of Liberace with the intimate truth of the story told in Steven Soderbergh’s “Behind the Candleabra,” premiering tonight on HBO, is this remarkable film’s greatest strength. It is a tonal high-wire act between the camp of a man who asked his lover to have plastic surgery to look like him and the truth of the honest romance of that relationship. It could have been all furs and showmanship but it is the realism in Michael Douglas’s and Matt Damon’s stunning performances that you’ll remember more than the several dozen costume changes.

Television Rating: 4.5/5.0

A young Scott Thorson (Matt Damon), who was actually much younger (only a teenager), goes to a Liberace show with his new friend Bob (Scott Bakula). Bob has the connections to get Scott backstage and it seems like “Lee” (Michael Douglas) is instantly intrigued by this handsome, kindhearted, young man. When Scott offers to help Liberace out with his dog’s health problems, one of the most infamously closeted performers in the world becomes smitten. Before you know it, Scott is sitting in Liberace’s hot tub, clinking champagne glasses, and soon getting intimate enough that every major studio turned this film down as being “too gay.” The stories of a dozen or so young men used and thrown away by Liberace before he got to Scott don’t seem to dissuade him.

Behind the Candleabra
Photo credit: HBO

For six years, Walter Liberace and Scott Thorson were a couple. The excellent script by Richard LaGravenese (“The Fisher King,” “The Bridges of Madison County”), based on Thorson’s book, certainly implies that Liberace saw Scott, as he did most of his young lovers, as something of a possession. He sent his doctor (a thoroughly slimy Rob Lowe) to transform Scott through diet pills and plastic surgery and he made Scott a part of his act, driving him on stage in a lavish Rolls Royce. However, at least as presented in “Behind the Candleabra,” there was an honest intimacy to their relationship as well. When they’re getting along, one believes there’s at least something approximating love. At the very least, Liberace loves having Scott around, and Scott, long looking for his own family, likes being needed.

Behind the Candleabra Photo credit: HBO

And then the house of cards that naturally comes with an excessive existence collapses. Scott descends deeper into drug addiction and the piece takes on a “Boogie Nights” quality, carried by Damon’s striking performance. Did Scott’s increasingly bad behavior push Liberace away even more, making their ugly “divorce” inevitable or was Scott pushed there by an uncaring man who was both father figure and lover? “Behind the Candleabra” doesn’t present easy answers to what was clearly a very complex relationship.

Steven Soderbergh has claimed that “Behind the Candleabra” will be his last film (although he’s reportedly already set to direct and produce a TV series) and while I absolutely don’t believe he’s done making films, there would be no shame in having this as his final entry (even if the great, and recently released on Blu-ray, “Side Effects” works better as a “Greatest Hits” of themes that Soderbergh has played with in the past). “Candleabra” bears all the fingerprints of a man fully in command of his filmmaking abilities. The sets, costumes, and stage shows were recreated with a “Mad Men”-esque degree of detail and one can sense in every frame that this is the work of a master filmmaker. My only complaint there would be that the film feels a little bloated at nearly two hours and a tighter trip to the editing bay might have cut a few minutes and truly made for a masterpiece.

Behind the Candleabra Photo credit: HBO

Although one can hardly blame Soderbergh for not wanting to leave any of Damon and Douglas’s work on the cutting room floor. They are both so good that one has to consider these two performances among their career best. Douglas will get all the acclaim for he has the showier role but Damon is just as good in what is arguably the lead (I’m sure it won’t happen but Damon should win the Lead Actor Emmy and Douglas the Supporting Actor one) since we follow Scott’s story and perspective much more than Liberace’s. Douglas finds the unique voice of a man who visited sex shops in his show outfits to frequent glory holes but still sued anyone who called him gay (and won!). Damon has the more relatable and emotional part, proving yet again that he’s one of our best actors when given a true arc like he has been given here.

If this is Soderbergh’s last film, he is going out with what is, ultimately, a performance piece for two actors whose careers he helped define. Michael Douglas certainly had a career pre-Soderbergh but he has been in three Soderbergh films, including arguably his most acclaimed (“Traffic”), and recently welled up at Cannes when discussing the importance of this role to the next phase of his post-cancer career, while Matt Damon has been in a whopping seven Soderbergh flicks. Liberace always liked to end with a show-stopper, something the crowd wouldn’t forget. No one will forget “Behind the Candleabra.”

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com [email protected]